Some English biscuits from a recipe book published in the year of the French Revolution. Left: Toad in a Hole Biscuits, Top: Judge's Biscuits, Right: Fine Almond Faggots, Bottom: Yarmouth Biscuits
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Biscuits have been on my mind for some time. Last week food writer and television cook Nigel Slater came to my kitchen to find out about how biscuits were made in Britain before they were mass-produced in factories. Nigel is the presenter of a programme on biscuits which will air on the BBC later this year. We made seventeenth century Shrewsbury Cakes from a recipe collected by John Evelyn and I introduced him to a number of forgotten English biscuits that once graced the dessert tables of the Georgian nobility. Most of these I made from recipes in Frederick Nutt's The Complete Confectioner (London: 1789). These luxury items, designed for accompanying wine rather than tea, are so much nicer than a lot of the manufactured biscuits consumed in Britain today They are also very easy to make. So I have appended some of Nutt's recipes at the end of this article.
My all time favourites are his toad-in-a-hole biscuits, whose name almost certainly arose because of their similarity to the popular Georgian supper dish toad-in-a-hole. This cheap and cheerful delicacy was originally made by covering pieces of meat, usually beef, in a milk, egg and flour batter and baking it in the oven. The earliest printed recipe for the savoury toad-in-a-hole is in Richard Briggs, The English Art of Cookery (London: 1788) published only a year before Nutt's biscuit version. In the modern incarnation of the dish, the beef has been replaced with sausages. India Mandelkern, to my mind the foremost blogger on eighteenth century English food culture, has written a short, but fascinating essay on toad-in-hole, to which there is a link at the end of this posting.
Toad-in-a-hole-biscuits were made from little rounds of almond paste into which one or two dried cherries were pushed before they were baked. Like the Yorkshire pudding batter used in the savoury dish, the almond paste rises as it bakes, enveloping the cherries, thus creating the miniature 'toad-in-a-holes'. Nutt's recipe calls for 'dried cherries'. What he means by this are syrup sweetened and candied cherries, not exactly the same as glacé cherries. I use dried morello cherries which work really well.
If my own favourite from the filming session was the toad-in-a-hole biscuit. Nigel Slater's was Nutt's 'Orange Biscuit', which he said was the most delicious biscuit he had eaten in his life. Tasting like a cumulus cloud lightly spread with marmalade, this fluffy, but incredibly crisp morsel dissolves on the tongue in micro-seconds. If you cannot read Mr Nutt's recipe in the photo below, I have appended a clearer version at the end of the posting.
Frederick Nutt's Orange Biscuits. Photo: Nigel Slater |
Union, Wine and some other patriotic friends |
Over many decades I have sought out quite a few of the biscuit prints and dockers formerly used by confectioners and bakers, but so far a Union Biscuit stamp has eluded me. However, I do own a remarkable biscuit roller which is carved with a total of fifteen different designs, among which is a Union stamp. Some of the other stamps on the roller are also patriotic. One, emblazoned with VR, dates the roller very definitely to the reign of Queen Victoria. There is also a royal crown, a shamrock of Ireland, a thistle of Scotland and a rose of England. Some of the other designs are decorative and represent ears of wheat, pineapples and a ship's anchor. One is engraved with the word WINE, indicating that it was for making a dessert biscuit to be consumed with a glass of wine.
Frederick Vine gives five recipes for wine biscuits and has this to say on the subject,
'Almost all biscuits not made for special purposes are really wine biscuits; yet in almost every shop you will invariably find a special biscuit made and sold under this heading. Why it should be so, I know not; yet , being so it becomes my duty to direct your attention to the fact, and give a few special mixtures accordingly.'
What he is saying is that most biscuits were once made for consuming with wine. We now of course devour them more commonly with tea. Applying this information to the biscuits that my roller was used to produce makes a great deal of sense. Only one recipe mix was required to make the fifteen different biscuit designs, which I suspect were all intended to be used when toasting. The VR, the royal crown, the Union and the symbols of the constituent countries of the kingdom are all represented. During the nineteenth century the very large industrial biscuit manufacturers, such as Carrs, Huntley and Palmers, Peak Freans etc. produced many different stamped biscuits of this kind. Some like 'zoological biscuits' were moulded in the form of various animals for the delight no doubt of Victorian children, but all were made with the same basic recipe, usually along the lines of Vine's recipe for Union biscuits above. These enormous factories used mechanical rollers to produce their printed biscuits which were made by the million. Despite the competition from these big companies, small scale confectioners and bakers continued to make handcrafted biscuits using the old fashioned techniques described by Vine. However the biscuit roller was a step up from the biscuit stamp and I have had a great deal of fun using it to recreate these Victorian delights.
Toad-in-a-Hole Biscuits.
TAKE one pound of sweet, and one ounce and a half of bitter almonds, and pound them in a mortar very fine with water, then one pound and a quarter of Lisbon sugar, and mix it very well with the almonds: do not make it too thin, and remember there are no eggs in this; then put one sheet of paper on your wire, and some wafer paper on that, then take a spoon and make your biscuits round on the wafer paper, about the size of a half-crown piece; then put one or two dried cherries in the middle of them; and sift some powdered sugar over them, and put them in the oven, which must have a moderate heat, and when they come out, cut the wafer paper round them, but leave the paper at the bottom of them.
Judges Biscuits.
TAKE six eggs and break them into a copper pan, yolks and whites together, whisk them well for about five minutes, mix half a pound of powdered sugar with the eggs, and whisk them for ten minutes, put as many carraway seeds as you think proper, and half a pound of sifted flour, mix it well with a wooden spoon, and put three papers on your plates ; then take a spoon and drop them on papers about the size of a crown piece, sift some powdered sugar over them, let them be rather thick in the middle, and the oven rather sharp and when they come out, cut them off the paper while hot.
Fine Almond Faggots.
CUT some sweet almonds in halves, put them and some whites of eggs in a bason together ; put a little powdered sugar, to make the almonds stick together, mix them well together in a bason ; put some wafer papers on your wire, make the almonds up in little heaps with your fingers, as big as you please ; sift a little powdered sugar over them, before you put them in the oven ; let them be a little brown, and then take them out, and cut the wafer paper off round them, that is ragged, and leave the wafer paper at the bottom of them.
Yarmouth Biscuits.
TAKE six ounces of currants, wash and pick them very clean, dry them well, rub a little flour among them to make them white, and put half a pound of powdered sugar with the currants upon a clean dresser, add twelve ounces of flour sifted, and half a pound of the best fresh butter you can get; break three eggs and mix all the ingredients together to become a paste that you can roll it on the dresser the thickness of an eighth part of an inch, and then cut them out either round or what shape you fancy.
N. B. Your oven must be rather hot, and put two or three sheets of paper under them, do not bake them too much, only just make them brown.
Orange Biscuits.
TAKE one pound of sweet almonds, pound them in a mortar very fine with whites of eggs ; take ten China oranges, rasp the rind off them very fine, and put it with the almonds ; add three pounds of powdered sugar, and mix. it well, if you find it too thick, put more whites of eggs to it and mix it well; then put two or three sheets of paper under, besides that you have put them on : let your oven have a moderate heat ; drop little round pieces of paste on your paper, about half as big as a nutmeg, and put them in the oven : let them have a fine brown, and take them off when cold.
N. B. Your oven must be rather hot, and put two or three sheets of paper under them, do not bake them too much, only just make them brown.
Orange Biscuits.
TAKE one pound of sweet almonds, pound them in a mortar very fine with whites of eggs ; take ten China oranges, rasp the rind off them very fine, and put it with the almonds ; add three pounds of powdered sugar, and mix. it well, if you find it too thick, put more whites of eggs to it and mix it well; then put two or three sheets of paper under, besides that you have put them on : let your oven have a moderate heat ; drop little round pieces of paste on your paper, about half as big as a nutmeg, and put them in the oven : let them have a fine brown, and take them off when cold.
N. B. Your oven must be rather hot, and put two or three sheets of paper under them, do not bake them too much, only just make them brown.
Please read India Mandelkern's great essay The Secret History of Toad-in-a-Hole
Never met a biscuit I didn't like and the roller is quite a beauty.
ReplyDeleteHi Donna,
DeleteIt is beautiful, but also very practical and saves a lot of work. Of course it was also the prototype for the mechanical rollers that are still used to mass-produce biscuits with these kinds of patterns, which of course are still with us.
Cheers
Ivan
Some questions about the recipes, if you would be so indulgent! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteJudges Biscuits
“…and put three papers on your plates…” Would this be interpreted as putting three layers of parchment paper onto a metal baking sheet?
“…the oven rather sharp …” Is this referring to a very hot oven? How hot did you choose to use? Would that work with the Yarmouth and orange biscuits (“ Your oven must be rather hot”)?
Fine Almond Faggots
“…put some wafer papers on your wire…” Would this be interpreted as using a wire rack rather than a metal baking sheet? And, is wafer paper the same as parchment paper or is it “rice paper”, the thin, edible “paper”?
“…and cut the wafer paper off round them, that is ragged, and leave the wafer paper at the bottom of them.” I see this as cutting the “edible rice paper” around the almond faggots while still leaving the wafer paper on the bottom of each, now individual, almond faggot. Do I interpret that correctly?
Hi Elise,
DeleteI have attempted to answer your questions -
Judges Biscuits
“…and put three papers on your plates…” Would this be interpreted as putting three layers of parchment paper onto a metal baking sheet?
Yes this is correct, though the paper used for baking at this period was not like modern greaseproof, parchment or silicone paper. It was a laid paper, similar to a light watercolour paper. Although here the author tells us to 'cut\ the biscuits off the paper, in other recipes he instructs us to wet the back of the paper once they come out of the oven, a method that works very well.
“…the oven rather sharp …” Is this referring to a very hot oven? How hot did you choose to use? Would that work with the Yarmouth and orange biscuits (“ Your oven must be rather hot”)?
'Sharp' here means a fairly hot oven. I baked these in my range oven which is heated from the fire. At a guess the temperature was at about 190C. You have to watch they don't burn. Because of the high sugar content most of these sweet biscuits were baked at between 160 and 190C. Any hotter and they brown too quickly.
Fine Almond Faggots
“…put some wafer papers on your wire…” Would this be interpreted as using a wire rack rather than a metal baking sheet? And, is wafer paper the same as parchment paper or is it “rice paper”, the thin, edible “paper”?
Confectioners frequently baked on wire racks. Remember if they are using a wood fired oven, it keeps the delicate biscuits off the dusty oven floor. The heat could also circulate under and around them without them coming in direct contact with the oven floor which always retains a lot of heat. Wafer paper was close to modern rice paper, but not exactly the same. The only recipe I know to make it is in John Thacker, The Art of Cookery. (Newcastle upon Tyne: 1758)
“…and cut the wafer paper off round them, that is ragged, and leave the wafer paper at the bottom of them.” I see this as cutting the “edible rice paper” around the almond faggots while still leaving the wafer paper on the bottom of each, now individual, almond faggot. Do I interpret that correctly?
That is perfectly correct.
Cheers
Ivan